Deborah Tannen is a frequent guest on television and radio news and information shows, including The Colbert Report, 20/20, Good Morning America, The Today Show, The Rachael Ray Talk Show, PBS NewsHour, Charlie Rose, Oprah, Hardball, Nightline, many shows on CNN and NPR including Morning Edition, All Things Considered, The Diane Rehm Show, and Fresh Air. She has been featured in and written for most major newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, USA Today, People, The Washington Post, and The Harvard Business Review.

Deborah Tannen is one of only six in Georgetown University's College of Arts and Sciences who hold the distinguished rank of University Professor. She has been McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at Princeton University and spent a term in residence at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey; she has twice been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford in Palo Alto, California. The recipient of five honorary doctorates, she is a member of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation Board of Directors.

In addition to her seven books for general audiences, Tannen is author or editor of sixteen books and over one hundred articles for scholarly audiences. She has also published poems, short stories, and personal essays. Her first play, "An Act of Devotion," is included in The Best American Short Plays 1993-1994. It was produced, together with her play "Sisters," by Horizons Theatre in Arlington, Virginia.

“[Deborah Tannen] is the world’s most famous linguist…akin to Margaret Mead, who popularized the field of anthropology, or Stephen Jay Gould, who brought paleontology to a wider public.”
– The Washingtonian